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One
Riva
Aborrowed power ripples through my veins. It’s as familiar as the men standing around me but exhilaratingly new at the same time.
I test my sense of the energy inside me like a flexing of muscles, looking around the clearing where we’re holding this demonstration.
The warm breeze ruffles the fronds on a nearby palm tree and licks under my braid. December in southern Spain feels like spring has in most places I’ve been to before.
I shift my feet against the thick grass and study the other, bushier trees that surround the clearing. All I need is a single, small branch jutting away from the others.
I’d rather not chop down an entire tree—or even half of one—by accident.
There. One of the shorter trees, barely more than a sapling, has a long twig with just a sprinkling of leaves poking from its trunk below the thicker boughs.
I gather the roiling power behind my eyes and focus it into heat. Then I slice that heat down through the base of the twig.
It only takes a moment. A whiff of smoke laces the air with a crisp woody scent, and the twig drops to the ground, its severed end charred black.
As I glance at Zian and nudge the tingle of energy from me back into his brawny form, Rollick brings his hands together in a brief round of applause. “Fascinating. Both in how far your skills have developed and how seamlessly you can exchange them.”
Our host smiles at us, his dark blue eyes twinkling. In his human guise, the millennia-old demon has the stunning good looks of a movie star—and I find him as difficult to read as if he really was only a mask made of special effects and studio lighting.
The beings like Rollick—who call themselves shadowkind but most humans who know of them call monsters—haven’t often been friendly to my guys and me. Many of them don’t trust beings likeus: hybrids with both human and shadowkind characteristics, capable of major supernatural power but lacking the few weaknesses that can hinder other “monsters.” Shadowbloods, as our makers named us.
Which is probably fair, because the humans who created us did it specifically so that we could go out and kill shadowkind on their behalf. They weren’t counting on us developing strong enough minds of our own to decidetheywere a hell of a lot more monstrous than our supposed enemies.
And Rollick has proven more than once that he doesn’t consider us the enemy either. It’s thanks to him that we made it away from the worst of our captors just yesterday.
I’m not sure how many other shadowkind might be watching the demonstration he asked for after we told him about our new abilities. One thing they can do and we can’t is merge into patches of darkness in their truest shadowy forms.
There could be dozens of beings watching us from beneath the trees without us having a clue.
We’ve already traded powers a few times while Rollick watches. Without speaking, Andreas looks toward me. He meets my gaze with a softly reassuring smile as I feel the quiver of one of my shadowblood powers coursing out of me.
He turns his head with a jostle of his dark brown curls and fixes his gray eyes on a butterfly fluttering through the clearing. Before my heart can even finish skipping a beat, the insect plummets to the ground.
Rollick is watching more intently now. My most brutal talent, the vicious banshee shriek that can rend bodies apart with its hunger for pain, has always worried the shadowkind the most. And it’s developed new dimensions too.
“You didn’t make a sound,” the demon says to Andreas as Drey passes my power back to me with a little jolt.
Across from me, Jacob’s mouth forms a tight smirk. He’s always appreciated my powers, as terrifying as they might be. “She can scream just in her head now. Which I guess means any of the rest of us can too.”
Beside him, Griffin nods. “We haven’t found any power wecan’tborrow from each other.”
It’s still a little strange seeing the twins side by side after four years of believing Griffin was dead. They’re mirror images of each other in so many ways, but time has shaped them a little differently.
The sharp angles of Griffin’s face look a little softer than Jacob’s harder edges. His golden-blond hair drifts shaggier around his face, while Jacob keeps his shorter strands swept back from his forehead.
I notice those minor details because I know them both so well. A stranger would still mix them up.
Rollick taps a finger against his mouth. If he’s disturbed by the progression of my talent, it doesn’t show in his languid voice. “This is all very interesting. I can’t say in all my centuries that I’ve ever heard of shadowkindtradingpowers.”
Dominic lifts his head where he’s standing next to me, his short auburn ponytail swishing across the collar of his long-sleeved tee. His two slim tentacles, a more orange hue than his olive-brown skin, protrude from two notches cut in that collar just below his shoulders.
“We aren’t shadowkind,” he points out in his usual quietly thoughtful tone. “The guardians made something totally new with us. It’s not the only way the six of us are connected.”
My hand rises automatically to the top of my chest, where a line of five thumbprint-sized splotches decorate my collarbone like a tattooed necklace. The marks connect me to all of my men, each blooming the first time our shadows merged alongside our bodies.
